Food History

Alas, we have had our first recipe failure. Chicken baskets were just too tricky.

Anyone else got results to report?

Today’s link is for dreaming. It contains a recontructed fourteenth century meal - though not the same reconstructed 14th century meal that I did for Conflux earlier this year. This may possibly be because someone else did it.

(sorry, today is a day for sarcasm - Sundays are *not* supposed to be this busy!)

Technical whatevers mean I’m a day late with everything. Yesterday’s post was supposed to be a family recipe post and I promised Mod35sbabe that I would give her a 1940s recipe for her novel. There is an obvious recipe where these two promises coincide and that obvious recipe is raisin wine.

During World War II many imports to Australia were impeded. Happened all over the world. The Australian Jewish Community was particularly hard-hit, however, because it was *tiny*. Think of its size now - a bit more than 100,000 people - and then calculate how much smaller it was before the massive post-War influx. Jewish food changed after the War - no more Christmas pudding, no more roast potatoes that had been dipped in unkosher stuff.

During the War, things were different too. Even in the least kosher community in the world you need wine for Passover. And unleavened bread, but I don’t know what people did about that. I do know what the Melbourne Jewish community did about the wine, because my family was vaguely involved. I also know their source of dill pickles, because my maternal grandmother always maintained that Old Mr Pose used our family recipe. Since our family recipe for those pickles has been lost, it’s almost impossible to prove. We eat Pose’s pickles and enjoy them, every Passover, and recall the days when my grandfather and great-grandfather made their own and they tasted salty and garlicky and full of goodness. I will retell this to you next Passover in all likelihood.

The wine was a different matter. My grandmother had separated from her husband; they divorced after the war - Polack is my father’s maiden name. A friend of hers made the wartime wine for the Jewish community and she gave my grandmother the recipe.

We lost it, as families do, but my aunt found it again when I was doing culinary research and asked about family recipes. It was a secret recipe, but that was sixty years ago and all parties to the secret are dead.

Raisin wine

10 lbs* raisins chopped finely and put into stone jar with 11 bottles of water. Let it stand in a warm place for a week then strain off the raisins and put juice back in jar with 1/2 nutmeg 2 pieces of cinnamon. Mix through well and let it stand till a big skin forms. 5 tbs sugar 1 bottle of water and 1 botle of wine dissolved over fire. Pour into jar and mix well. brown sugar for colouring. 1 lb* white sugar and a little water. Boil over slow fire till dark brown. Add slowly 1 cup of water.

*could be tbs, but lbs is more probable

Note: I get the impression that both women knew what they were doing with this recipe and that only the key and forgettable bits were included. Think of it as features and notes, rather than the whole recipe. If anyone has a knowledge of winemaking (Yes, Farley, I am dropping hints in your direction - how did you guess? ) and could fill in the blanks, then it might be possible to actually make this recipe and recreate this little bit of Jewish history. I don’t feel safe making it according to these notes, myself - but I’ve never made wine so I don’t know what to look for and how to spot potential problems.

I promised this to Jenny . It is from my late cousin Edith. I miss Edith. She came out to Australia as a refugee in 1938. She bequeathed me copies of all her family cake recipes and some fabulous stories to accompany them. You’ll see them from time to time when I get nostalgic. She was an important part of my life for many years.

Edith didn’t actually make strudel - she told me how her mother made it though, so this technique is from a Hungarian-Viennese Jewish family who made it this way just over eighty years ago. I have no recipe for the dough proper, though Edith said her mother put the flour in a bowl and gradually worked the other ingredients in the centre of the well in the flour. When it was a smooth lump, she then proceeded to the steps below. (My memory told me it was an egg-based dough, but I was confusing it with lokshen - strudel dough is mainly flour, with some melted butter, a bit of warm water, and maybe a squeeze of lemon juice or some salt.)

Edith’s mother would make a strudel dough then lock herself in the kitchen. The dough eventually became rather like a filo dough - that’s how much you have to stretch it. One of the tricks is to keep it cool while you work it - I suspect that’s why she used a tablecloth. Edith said her mother was very nervous about the whole thing, which is why she locked the door - to keep children out.

Once she was safely locked in the kitchen with her small lump of strudel dough, Edith’s mother would flour the big white tablecloth which was, of course, spread on the very large kitchen table. The dough was stretched out carefully and painstakingly over the tablecloth using the knuckles to stretch and pull it (though other recipes talk about starting with a rolling pin then moving to stretching using thumbs and first fingers). When the dough was stretched very, very evenly and very, very, very thin and actually hung over the edges of the big table (occasional holes were not a problem), Edith’s mother would take a pair of kitchen scissors and snip the too-thick portions from each edge. Then she took melted butter and gently brush the full table-length of dough. After this she lightly scattered breadcrumbs over the entire length. Then it was ready to cook with.

I wrote you an entirely articulate post about silphium, a plant of dreamy wonder of which the like has not been seen for nearly 2000 years. My computer doesn’t like the unseasonally cold weather here and it decided to go to a no-page and eat my post. Sent it to join silphium (also known as laser) in extinction?

Rather than repeat all the bad jokes I’ll let you imagine them yourself. And rather than repeat all the technical stuff, I found you a new and improved link which contains most of it. And aren’t you impressed that I linked the word ‘link’?

Silphium may well be exinct, and I have friends who swear by the old tale that Nero ate the last morsel of it in existence. it’s such a Neronic thing to do, after all. But I wonder. To be honest, just because old sources claim something is extinct doesn’t mean it is actually gone forever. I don’t know what sort of search went on in Nero’s day, but I rather doubt there has been a thorough hunt for the plant more recently. And my wondering makes me hope that one day one of you will rediscover it and give me a whole heap to cook with. Yes, I promise I’ll invite you to dinner.

What I most want to know about silphium in its various forms is if it’s like asafoetida (which is called ‘poor man’s laser’ so is most likely to resemble to spice-use of the plant) or whether it resembles something else. I’ve heard garlic suggested. I’m about to stir fry some vegies in garlic and a little bit of asafoetida in honour of silphium. It was supposed to be the crowning jewel of the cookable plant kingdom, so it deserves commemoration. And I deserve dinner.

This week’s Carnival of the Recipes is hosted by Men in Aprons and is worth checking out. Of *course* it’s worth checking out, since they linked to one of my biscuit recipes! Actually, it’s worth checking out because there are a host of delectables described. I’m working my way through the list and my mouth just doesn’t want to stop watering.

Update: Alas, Men-in-aprons had a server meltdown and they appear to have lost the whole carnival. They are up and running again and previous carnivals can be found here , so you don’t have to entirely miss out on scrumptious recipes. Maybe my biscuits will appear another time :).

Trudy at Elementary Chef has declared that Wednesdays are for food stories. Today’s snow (sumer is i-cumen in - and it *still* snowed!) made me think of iceboxes. This was mainly because Canberra felt like the interior of an icebox most of the afternoon.

A few years ago I was given an icebox story. For those of us who are too young to have lived with iceboxes, I ought to start with an explanation. Before electric refrigerators, the standard way of keeping food cool in Australia (and in many other places) was the icebox. The iceman would come around regularly and deliver appropriately-sized large blocks of ice which would gradually melt while keeping comestibles cool.

Iceboxes were used for other things, too.

Many years ago, a friend’s mother had a frypan that was just a bit too hot. She wanted to cool it quickly, so she opened the icebox and rested the overheated pan on top of the ice. Naturally it caused a rather large melt, and she was expecting the water that resulted. What she wasn’t expecting was to find her missing car keys. They had been lost in between a sliver of old ice and the thickness of new several deliveries before.

Four members of the Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild joined the merry throng of recipe testers tonight. Welcome, all of you.

So far I’m the only one who has sent me test results for blogging (I should post myself letters too and make the Post Office people think I’m popular). I’m hoping that this means everyone is frantically busy with other things rather than all the recipes I sent out were tragic failures! If anyone has updates, I’d love to hear.

Cookbooks have personalities and are mobile. The minute I need a particular one, that is the single one that cannot be found. This is how I know about their mobility. I mention my little Louisianan book (which was the product of a church women’s group, from memory) and lo, it goes into hiding. I know it’s a church book because it’s polite and doesn’t taunt me.

When it appears then I will blog it. Until then, I have another 70s booklet called “Recipes”, produced by the Glasshouse United Guild. It might even be a bit earlier than the 70s as it’s typewritten and possibly gestetnered. In fact, it probably *is* earlier. It has Australian spelling and measurements (’S.R. flour’ is unAmerican, I believe). It has 50c boldly written on it in texta. I wonder if it came from south-east Queensland?

Salads don’t make an appearance. There is a whole category labelled ‘Biscuits’ (be still my beating heart) and another called ‘Scones and Loaves.’ I really think this booklet needs exploring, don’t you? I rather think that it emerged into the world just before the Great Australian Cuisine Shift. No salads, you see. And very conservative recipes.

I’ll give a biscuit recipe today and explore the rest of the booklet gradually. I bet it has casseroles. Oh, but I hated the casseroles of my childhood. Except goulash. I find good goulash hard to hate. And yes, it has goulash *and* a casserole *and* … wait for it … meatloaf. It also has choko pickle. I will go out on a limb and claim this booklet is from the sixties.

Apricot Coconut Biscuits

4 oz butter
4 oz sugar
1 egg
1 cup SR flour
salt
1/2 cup chopped nuts
1/2 cup apricot jam
4 tbs coconut

Cream butter and sugar then add egg. Fold the nuts in then the rest of the dry ingredients. Spread on a flat tray then spread the jam over then sprinkle with coconut. Cook in a moderate oven.

I used to make something very like this when I was very young, but without the nuts. If my family made it with nuts, it would have been with almonds. These days I would see the word ‘apricot’ and immediately add macadamias.

Summer storms flitted around Canberra today.

By the time dinnertime was upon me, I just wanted some comfort food. I made an avocado salad with tomato and salt and mountain pepper and lots of lemon juice. This is a terribly seventies style of salad.

I have a cookbook from Louisiana from the seventies. It’s one of the tens of thousands that everyone typed up and sold for charity. It also describes salads, but they include tinned food and packet food and all sorts of strange powders and odd concoctions.

If I come across the book in the next couple of days I’ll find you a couple of recipes. Naturally, if there are scones and biscuits I will add them, but mostly I’ll look for salads, I think. Given this weather, it’s only natural I be fascinated by seventies salads.

There will be a “retro recipe challenge” on November 17 here. They welcome submissions, and have already expressed an interest in my grandmother’s salad cream recipe.

Today’s link is here. There are just so many wonderful food stories round and about that to have a website that brings a group of them together is entirely joyful.

The Smithsonian has a search function on this page so you can search for recipes types, story types, heritage types and states. They’re still collecting (the only recipe under “Jewish” was a mindbogglingly fattening one for fried cheesecakes) so it’s worth bookmarking the site and returning to it from time to time. It’s the perfect site for browsing on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

From my grandmother’s little green cookbook, here is a break from scones. I was going to give you icecream because of the story I told on my other blog today, about the murders of an icecream vendor, but I thought that would be rather evil of me, especially as the story on my other blog is an unredeemed tragedy. His cart figures heavily, which is entirely irrelevant here.

Instead of icecream, here is salad cream. This is a particularly interesting recipe because my family doesn’t make it any more. It hasn’t made it for forty years, in fact. Foodways are not entirely about continuity.

Salad cream

2 rounded tsp cornflour
1 teacup wine vinegar
1 tsp salt
1-2 tbs sugar
1 dessertspoon dry mustard
1 well beaten egg
1 tbs oil
1 breakfast cup milk

Mix ingredients in the order given, then cook over a low heat stirring until cornflour is cooked. Pour into jars and when cold screw lids on tightly.

Note: My father believed in *big* breakfast cups and this is his mother’s recipe. Be generous with the milk. Also make sure you use milk with enough cream - modern 4% milk is scrawny and feeble. My grandmother had a cow for some years and my father’s estimate of the milk fat from that cow was 25-30%. I wouldn’t go as far as using cream (our tastes have changed and we’re more aware of the consequences of using that level of fat in cooking), but I would definitely never use low fat milk in this recipe.

Has anyone noticed the number of duck recipes on US foodie blogs since Tuesday? The wave of recipes celebrating the Democrat’s political victory (or Bush’s finishing his term in office as a lame-duck president) may pass by tomorrow and be forgotten except when grandparents tell their grandchildren in fifty years time “And the last time I cooked duck was in ‘06. Ah, that was an election.” If we’re really lucky, though, one recipe will capture enough people’s imagination and it will become a standard.

If anyone has a sublime duck recipe that they think ought to become a standard please send it to me. I don’t have much in the way of duck recipes and besides, new events that the public spontaneously commemorate with cooking are reasonably rare. And besides, I’m Australian so it’s not my election. I will blog your recipes and we can all have a share in the fascinating proces of watching a country add to their culinary history. Let’s all watch politics blend into foodways. Frabjous stuff.

It’s just as fascinating from my end if no-one sends me recipes, to be honest. It’s an indicator that this is just a tiny blip on the food history radar. Just as frabjous - blips are just as much the stuff of history as changes to the food calendar due to political events. They’re way harder to track, though.

MANSIE WAUGH’S DREAM, CONCERNING THE
Execution of Burke, PART FIRST.

They now set the breakfast, and it was a weel covered table ; that a Provost’s couldna been better : there was ham, eggs, and finnan haddies, biscuits and buttered toast, honey and jelly, tea and coffee, and several things that I didna ken the names o’ ; but, for a’ the temtations, ne’er a bit would gang o’er my craig.-I grew sick, and had to leave the table, passing a dreary day in bed, where I could think of nothing but Burke: I got a’ gliff o’ sleep about gloamin’, and the parlour, I met half a for I wakened about nine o’clock, as hungry as a hawk. When I came into the parlour, I met half a dozen o’gentlemen, who Mr. Bodkin said, were a’ fain to see me. I found they had a’ read my volume; they paid me many compliments, comparing me to authors of whom I had never heard, and saying that my name would gang down to distant ages.

HABBIE SIMPSON & HIS WIFE ;
Or, A New Way of Raising the Wind.

-Sae in gangs Janet wi’ the lady, and get a basket wi’ some biscuits and speerits, and ither articles needfu’ for sic an occasion, and thanking the lady for her kindness, comes awa’ hame to Habbie fu’ blithely, when doon they sat, nor did they rise till they made an end o’ the contents o’ the basket. Noo, as the auld sang says, the mair ye drink the drier ye turn, for they were nae sooner dune than Habbie says-Losh, Janet, that was real guid; can ye no get some mair o’t ?- Na, na! (quo’ Janet,) I hae played my turn already. it’s your turn noo.-Oh, very weel (quo’ Habbie), if it’s my turn noo ye maun jist be dead next.

[cut]

.-Habbie thanked the laird for his kindness, bade him guid day, and cam’ awa’ hame geyan weel pleased wi’ what he had gotten, and sends Janet oot wi’ tha bottle to get mair whisky to carry on the spree. In the meantime, hame gangs the laird, whaur the first thing he heard was that Habbie Simpson was dead.-Na, na! (quo’ he.) it’s no Habbie; it’s only Janet.-It’s Habbie (quo’ the lady); wasna Janet here this morning hersel’ and tell’t me? and didna she get awa’ some speerits and biscuits, as she said there was naething in the house?

GOOD NEWS.

SPOKEN.—Iced cream and drumsticks, paper caps and
steam engines, Demerara cockels and split peas, silk hats
and jackets, ginger beer and peacocks’ feathers, bass drums
and pernela pumps, wine grapes and potato grapes, Morri-
son’s pills and wheel barrows, gimlets and yellow ochre,
hog’s lard and stilts, soldiers’ bonnets and cinnamon biscuits,
gumflowers and masons’ mells, pigs’ feet and clarionets,
cow heels and coffins, and course meat for negroes.